VT 2025 Theory of social and cultural sciences, 7.5 credits
The course runs digitally, via Zoom, between January and March 2025.
Course information
27 January, 13.15–15.00, Susan Foran, Introduction to the course
3 February, 13.15 -–15.00, Sven Anders Johansson, Traditional versus critical theory
Traditional versus critical theory: What does “Critical Theory” really mean? The seminar will focus on the epistemological ideals of Karl Popper (positivism) and Max Horkheimer (Frankfurt school).
Literature: Horkheimer, Max, “Traditional and Critical Theory”, Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Continuum, 1972) pp. 188–243 and Popper, Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Routledge, 2002).
17 February, 13.15–15.00, Anders E. Johansson, The possibility of another science
Based on texts by science theorist Isabelle Stengers, the seminar is devoted to questions about what science is and could be against the background of the challenges our time faces in terms of knowledge.
Literature: Stengers, Isabelle, Cosmopolitics I, trans. Robert Bononno (Minn. University of Minnesota Press, 2010) (Utdrag, excerpts) and Stengers, Isabelle, Thinking with Whitehead: A Free and Wild Creation of Concepts, trans. Michael Chase (Harvard University Press, 2011) (Utdrag, excerpts) and Stengers, Isabelle, Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science, trans. Stephen Muecke (Polity Press, 2018).
20 February 10.15–12.00, Samuel Edquist, Universalism and science
This seminar uses texts from different perspectives to discuss to what extent epistemological foundations of science and scholarship may or may not be shared across class divisions, between colonisers and colonised, etc.
Literature: a) relevant texts from Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies (2021) and b) selected parts from Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (Verso, 2013).
What parts of a) and b) that are to be read, will at the latest be announced when the course starts. Possibly, some other (freely available) text will also be included in the literature to be read before the seminar.
4 March 10.15–12, Andreas Hellerstedt, Creating knowledge in the humanities and social sciences
Literature: Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge (Routledge, 2002) and Chris Haufe, Do the Humanities Create Knowledge? (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
12 March 13:15–15.00, Susan Foran, Bakhtinian Thought
Discussion questions are designed to help bring all participants into a discussion of the work and relevance of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975).
Literature: Renfrew, Alastair, Mikhail Bakhtin (Routledge, 2015) with extracts from Thomson, Clive (ed.), Mikhail Bakhtin and the Epistemology of Discourse (Brill, 2023).
19 March 10:15 - 12:00, Martin Shaw, Pierre Bourdieu
Literature: Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Routledge, 2010).
Course syllabus